Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. This season's combatants come from the original five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King.

This week's Two Bosses fantasy deathmatch throws another loser who was voted back into the competition into the pit: King Dred, who lost his last match against King Ymiron, returns to test his claws against the subtle insinuations of Herald Volazj. Volazj is riding high in this season's tournament, easily winning his first matchup against Novos the Summoner and then shutting down Grand Magus Telestra.

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Patch 3.3 on Background Downloader
The first part of the Patch 3.3 is now available on the background downloader, you can stop mailing me about that. ^^ (But you can mail me about everything else!)



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Huntsman's Lodge has a terrific set of tips for running Power Auras as a hunter. I'm not running this addon (yet) on my hunter, but apparently it's pretty old news -- our old friend BRK had some ideas on how to use it a while back. But HL goes even farther, and I like a lot of his ideas, like a star that lights up when Dragonhawk isn't turned on -- I'll admit I make that mistake from time to time -- and warnings for "special circumstance" spells like Lock and Load and Kill Shot.

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Cocles over at Loregy.com (who I actually got to meet the other day -- good guy, and check out his license plate) has an interesting idea about something he spotted in the information about the Cataclysm zones the other day. Thousand Needles is getting a revamp, including possibly a new instance, and Cocles says that could mean something awesome: the return of the Grimtotem clan (just a warning: there is a more serious spoiler later in that post).

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This sort of video isn't usually considered to be WoW Moviewatch material. I can admit that. But the video still made me smile, and it has enough unique qualities that it's a step apart from the usual "Level 1 Raid video." So, take a moment and check out Level 1 Dwarven Hunter Raid.

First, the music used by the Warcraft Hunters Union gives the video a sense of narrative motion. There's definitely a building crescendo and anticipation to the events. Second, there isn't the usual rapid-fire spam of tiny numbers telling you how much damage the level 1 raiders are performing.

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Wrath is almost all wrapped up, and while we didn't know much about it before the expansion, we've all certainly experienced the token system that Blizzard implemented as they went along, where early instances drop one kind of badge/token, and then the newer instances offer up new tokens, which can then be exchanged back for the older ones and their rewards. Now that we see the big picture at the end of the expansion, it's pretty ingenious, actually, and it even allows Blizzard to beef up other parts of the game, as they did with the rewards in the new Dungeon system.

Not that he needs to, but Bornakk steps up on the forums to justify exactly this kind of tiered system. Players complain that Ulduar is "useless" now that you can obtain its badges from lots of different places, but Bornakk says this system is definitely preferable to what Blizzard did in vanilla and BC, which was requiring new raiders to run through all of the old content before seeing the new and shiny stuff. They don't want the old content to sit useless (and it's not -- lots of guilds are still running Ulduar and even Naxx for the hard modes and achievements), but after the high-end raiders have their fun, it's important to get everyone else up to speed as well.

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We've had quite a few submissions lately showcasing the various uses and abuses of the new Mohawk Grenade. Yeng of <Carpe Imperium> and his friends have all spent extensive time playing with the grenades, but recently, Yeng has decided to stop the jibber-jabber and get serious. Yeng is here to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and he's all out of gum. Although ... actually, he's not. Well, I suppose he can do both at the same time, as long as he doesn't accidentally choke to death on his Bubblicious.

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Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. This season's combatants come from the original five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King.

Returning underdog Loken showed why he was among the fighters readers voted back into the season, downing Gal'darah this week in the Two Bosses Thunderdome. Fifty-eight percent of the vote went to the Dark Titan from the Halls of Lightning. Gal'darah brought in some positive comments but ultimately lacked the votes to carry him through.

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Every week (usually), Shifting Perspectives examines issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we brace ourselves for the howling pack of tanks likely to descend upon us, but -- as we have previously observed -- we are used to staying at the top of someone's hate list.

If you've tanked at all over the course of Wrath, you've probably become familiar with the phrase "effective health." It's a concept that's cropped up with increasing frequency on the tanking forums, and not necessarily in a good way. If you knew nothing of the idea beyond how players tend to use it, you'd be forgiven for thinking that "effective health" is the only metric by which all tanks are measured, and proof that Blizzard either can't (or won't) balance the game. There are very real differences between the tanking classes when it comes to average EH, and this has resulted in some angry discussion when the term is thrown around by players who either don't really understand what it means, or don't know that it was meant to be used in context. Consequently, "effective health" as used on the tanking forums has become an endlessly parroted phrase that's not only starting to lose all meaning, but is also guaranteed to derail a thread once it makes its inevitable appearance.

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Ancilorn over at the European forums has confirmed that the armored Frost Wrym mounts mined from early builds of the Patch 3.3 PTR will be rewards for achievements in the Icecrown Citadel raid. Much like past raid dungeons have awarded mounts for completing meta-achievements, such as the Ironbound Proto-Drake for Ulduar, the Frost Wyrms will be "up for grabs," for dedicated raiders.

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